Richard B. Norgaard

Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy

Sustainability requires living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. In an attempt to measure the extent to which humanity satisfies this requirement, we use existing data to translate human demand on the environment into the area required for the production of food and other goods, together with the absorption of wastes. Our accounts indicate that human demand may well have exceeded the biospheres regenerative capacity since the 1980s. According to this preliminary and exploratory assessment, humanitys load corresponded to 70% of the capacity of the global biosphere in 1961, and grew to 120% in 1999.

The case for methodological pluralism

Abstract Ecology and economics share the same Greek root. Both address complex systems. Ecology consists of numerous approaches to understanding natural systems: energetics, population biology, food-web models, hierarchy theory to mention just a few. Within ecology, field knowledge and the reporting of new observations are well respected. Economics, on the other hand, is dominated by one pattern of thinking and standard of “proof”, the market model and econometrics. Within economics, field knowledge and observations per se are little valued. Agreement on a correct method is frequently taken as an indication of the maturity of a science. The argument is developed in this paper that all the aspects of complex systems can only be understood through multiple methodologies. The agreement on method within economics, however, seems to reflect stronger pressures within the discipline for conformity than for truth relative to ecology. Since ecological economics seeks to understand a larger system than either economics or ecology seeks to understand, a diversity of methodologies is appropriate and pressures to eliminate methodologies for the sake of conformity should be avoided.

Sustainable development: A co-evolutionary view☆

Abstract The challenges of sustainable development can be organized around three themes. First, modernization has been unsustainable because it has been supported by the use of hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals which are limited in availability and damaging to the atmosphere and terrestrial and aquatic systems. Sustainable development will require that the use of energy and chemicals be subservient to ecosystem maintenance. Second, political consensus and bureaucratic mobilization will be more difficult because we no longer believe that development is almost inevitable through the application of Western science. On the other hand, we may be less prone to make mistakes. The decline in belief in progress has also increased the opportunities for non-Western cultures to define development for themselves. Third, we are shifting from a mechanical to a co-evolutionary understanding of systems which helps explain why development has been unsustainable and what we must do to attain sustainability.

Economic indicators of resource scarcity: A critical essay

Abstract The theoretical arguments of the conceptual and empirical literature on economic indicators of long run resource scarcity are logically flawed. If resource allocators were informed of the nature of resource scarcity, their behavior and the economic indicators it generates would reflect the scarcity. But if they were so informed, we could simply ask them if resources were scarce. If they are not informed, their behavior and economic indicators are as likely to indicate their ignorance as the reality. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing whether they are informed or not unless we already know whether resources are scarce.

The debt of nations and the distribution of ecological impacts from human activities

As human impacts to the environment accelerate, disparities in the distribution of damages between rich and poor nations mount. Globally, environmental change is dramatically affecting the flow of ecosystem services, but the distribution of ecological damages and their driving forces has not been estimated. Here, we conservatively estimate the environmental costs of human activities over 1961–2000 in six major categories (climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, agricultural intensification and expansion, deforestation, overfishing, and mangrove conversion), quantitatively connecting costs borne by poor, middle-income, and rich nations to specific activities by each of these groups. Adjusting impact valuations for different standards of living across the groups as commonly practiced, we find striking imbalances. Climate change and ozone depletion impacts predicted for low-income nations have been overwhelmingly driven by emissions from the other two groups, a pattern also observed for overfishing damages indirectly driven by the consumption of fishery products. Indeed, through disproportionate emissions of greenhouse gases alone, the rich group may have imposed climate damages on the poor group greater than the latters current foreign debt. Our analysis provides prima facie evidence for an uneven distribution pattern of damages across income groups. Moreover, our estimates of each groups share in various damaging activities are independent from controversies in environmental valuation methods. In a world increasingly connected ecologically and economically, our analysis is thus an early step toward reframing issues of environmental responsibility, development, and globalization in accordance with ecological costs.

Intergenerational Transfers and the Social Discount Rate

This paper investigates the relationship between intergenerational asset transfers and the choice of the discount rate for use in cost-benefit analysis in a model of a competitive overlapping generations economy constrained by a socially managed exhaustible resource. Provided that there are no distortions in capital markets and that all agents hold perfect foresight, cost-benefit techniques will result in a Pareto efficient resource allocation if the discount rate is set equal to the market rate of interest. But since the path of the interest rate depends on the level of intergenerational transfers, cost-benefit techniques do not ensure a socially desirable distribution of welfare between generations; a social optimum will result only if intergenerational transfers are properly chosen and enforced. Decentralized private altruism may result in intergenerational transfers that both present and future individuals would agree are too small if members of the present generation attach positive weight to the general welfare of future generations, not simply their personal descendants. In a world where intergenerational transfers are non-optimal, second-best policy-making may imply a constrained optimum that is inefficient. Together, these findings suggest that cost-benefit analysis is at best a partial criterion to policy formulation that should be used only in conjunction with ethical principles that define the proper distribution of welfare between present and future generations.

Environmental economics: An evolutionary critique and a plea for pluralism

Abstract Environmental economics is a contradiction in terms. The contradiction is intuitive to the puzzled lay person inquiring about the nature of our subdiscipline. It is explicit to those who think of environmental systems in terms of complex, evolving interconnectedness and identify the economic model with the atomistic and mechanistic assumptions of classical mechanics. Within the subdiscipline, we try to resolve the contradiction by internalizing externalities, by matching market feedbacks with environmental relations. While acknowledging that insights can be drawn from the market view of environmental problems, I argue in this essay that (1) the contradiction is nerver resolved; (2) multiple, incongruous perspectives are all we have for understanding the interface between economic and environmental systems; and (3) environmental economics will thrive with a return to philosophical pluralism, to the open acceptance of the contradiction.

The Biological Control of Cassava Mealybug in Africa

Cassava, brought from South America 300 years ago free of its pests, became a major subsistence crop in Africa. A mealybug was mistakenly introduced in the early 1970s. By the 1980s the mealybug was a major pest. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture found a parasitic wasp in South America and reared and released it in Africa. Conservatively estimated, the benefit-cost ratio for this program is 149 to 1. This success indicates that biological control can play an important role in pest management.

Finding Hope in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Over the past quarter century, a new scientific activity has emerged: collective assessments by large numbers of scientists from different disciplines combining their expertise to better understand human interrelations with nature and to inform policy. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment exceeded all such assessments before it in both the breadth of its coverage and the depth of its analysis of socioecological system dynamics. The findings are not encouraging. Nearly all ecosystems are being degraded and will continue to be degraded for decades to come even if policy changes are initiated now. For scientists participating in the assessment, the MA had another disconcerting aspect. It clearly shows that our fragmented, disciplinary knowledges cannot simply be combined to form an understanding of a whole complex system. Counterbalancing the despair of the findings and scientific difficulties of aggregating specialized knowledges, the MA demonstrated the potential of a deliberative democratic approach to grappling with complex problems.

Paper assets, real debts

Purpose – This paper sets out to investigate the potential contribution of the inter‐disciplinary field of ecological economics to the explanation of the current economic crisis. The root of the crisis is the growing disjuncture between the real economy of production and the paper economy of finance.Design/methodology/approach – The authors trace the epistemological origins of this disjuncture to the myths of economism – a mix of academic, popular and political beliefs that served to explain, rationalise and perpetuate the current economic system.Findings – The authors recommend ending with economism and developing new collective and discursive processes for understanding and engaging with ecological‐economic systems.Originality/value – The authors embrace the notion of sustainable de‐growth: an equitable and democratic transition to a smaller economy with less production and consumption.